A circular bitcoin economy is a good goal to aim for and I think we're slowly making solid progress towards it. Even if you forget El Salvador, look at what Bitcoin Lightning has done to onboard so many people for microtransactions. And SN is another example. Many more will come now the momentum has kicked off. Supply and demand yo.

I think how trusted it is as an asset - which will ultimately determine participation in a growing Bitcoin economy - is a generational issue. Most people middle age and up, in the West at least, do not trust Bitcoin.

But the younger generations have a very different perception. Here, many do see Bitcoin as a store of value like gold and are very serious in their faith in Bitcoin.

And even outside young platforms like Nostr and SN, BTC has been used to facilitate real life transactions for decades now. Started off with that little thing called Silk Road.

I think people underestimate how big of a deal it is when people - especially sellers - are happy to trade in Bitcoin (and Monero more recently) on the darknet. They're literally trusting software with their very freedom.

And now we got an excited community putting this to all sorts of uses from zapping people they like on social media to V4V content creation to even Nostr + Lightning based marketplaces.

We're getting there. Won't happen overnight but we're getting there.

But no, most won't run their own nodes. However, as the barrier to entry is lowered by fancy UX's, the number will only go up. And I'm comfortable enough managing my node now that I'm more than happy to sell my friends they can have an account on mine if they trust to trust a friend instead of a company.